Snapshots of a Resonance
by twilightjunkie1313
Summary: When they resonate they blur the lines between themselves. The first time, the last time and the one time he wielded her.
1. Chapter 1

**Resonate**

…

The first time they resonate is clumsy. Un-refined and jagged and so unexpected the shock of it almost breaks their tenuous connection.

They are in an empty classroom. The still and the slight cold of the space register in Soul's mind and the thought flits over into her own.

She laughs at how he registers this detail amid the more important fact that they have become partners, mister and weapon. They are now functional, useful. Maka cannot help but allow herself to feel pride and intense joy at this first accomplishment.

Soul feels her laughter bubble over their connection, because it isn't so much a connection as it is a lack of privacy. He is in her mind and blood and heart, as he is sure she is in his. The feeling is simple, it is everything, all at once.

Resonance, he thinks (and knows she can hear his thought so he adds the slight hint of a smirk into it to hide his astonishment) is well named.

…

The last time they officially resonate is their graduation from the Academy. By then, the ceremony was mainly for show, more of a technicality than any real test of skill. The pair has already proven its efficiency.

Hours after the graduation ceremony Maka is called into the death room.

She arrives, walking into the blue skied room for the hundredth time since her arrival at the DWMA. She is greeted by Soul, Death the Kid and Lord Death himself.

"Where is Spirit?" Maka glances around again, sure this time that the scythe is absent.

There is a pause that settles in the space.

Lord Death floats to a spot behind his massive chair, resting his arms on its back and staring at the technician with vacant eyeholes. Maka looks the three of them over again, reigning in her confusion and instead nodding politely in Soul's direction.

The gesture is acknowledgment for him and pride on his behalf. He smiles back, taking a few steps in her direction before turning his focus to Kid.

"I have called you here to inform you that Soul is my scythe, not my father's." The young reaper had his hands clasped behind his back.

"While I very much respect my father, I am not him. To allow a weapon to operate without a technician is to deny them the opportunity to fully use their abilities."

Kid looked at the floor for a moment before continuing.

"With very few exceptions weapons are not misters, and misters are not weapons. There is a symmetry in a weapon and technician working together."

Maka heard Soul chuckle quietly beside her.

"While my father is gifted at wielding Spirit, I already have a very effective pair of weapons. So I called you here to offer you a job."

The young reapers eyebrow rose slightly.

"What?" Maka looked to Lord Death, who still stared at her with empty eyes. Soul steeped away from her, shoving his hands into his pockets.

"Soul needs a technician. I may be able to wield him properly one day, but there is no use in my doing so when I have two competent weapons of my own, and when there is already a highly capable technician available."

Soul smirked and shot a glance at Kid.

"That and he refused any other technician." The young reaper's tone was dry.

Maka could have sworn that she heard Soul murmur "damn straight" or something equivalent right on the heels of Kid's statement. She couldn't be sure.

This was just so odd.

Maka looked Death the Kid over, he stood with his heels together, toes slightly apart and arms crossed, head tilted slightly to the side. She resisted the urge to arc her own eyebrow and ask the young reaper if he was serious.

Instead she nodded slightly and said the two words that popped to mind.

"I accept."

…

"You have got to be joking."

Soul looked back and forth between Death the kid and Maka.

"She is not joking, and neither am I."

Death the kid set down his teacup and leveled and even stare at Soul.

"Ever since we knew she could transform into a weapon we have been curious about the extent of her abilities."

The young reaper made it sound so much more civilized than it did in Maka's own head.

She had been toying with the idea of being a weapon. She had the ability to do so. Though the extent she could control the ability was in question, so far, the only time she had managed to produce result was one exceptional occasion.

Other than that singular moment, she had not taken on any scythe form, not that she had attempted. Theory and reality were two different things after all.

"So we are asking you to assist, just this once. If it works, she will have satisfied her curiosity and you will have the satisfaction of switching places for a few hours. Mister and weapon in reverse."

Maka was impressed but slightly irked by the young reaper's suggestion. Though she knew the odds on her being able to repeat whatever she did during their battle with Asura were… well, they were slim to nonexistent. At best.

Soul was quiet for a few long moments.

"And if she cannot manage to get into weapon form, what then?"

Maka smiled, Soul knew her far too well to think she would let this go.

Death the Kid nodded once as a smirk crossed his features.

"Than she will let the issue rest for a while and we can regard whatever she did against Asura as a very well timed accident."

The next day Soul, Maka and the young reaper gathered in the backyard of Gallows mansion.

"Ready?" Soul asked, extending a hand to his partner.

She grasped his forearm tightly and let her eyes slide shut, falling into resonance with him.

It was familiar to her, the feeling of sharing and not sharing everything with Soul. They had nearly perfected their resonance and now, just out of the academy both of them could manipulate the link between them with ease.

It was slightly different to them now, this time he was still human and his awareness of his body being blood and bone (so much more fragile than steel) colored their minds in unison. She let a sliver of her irritation show through their link.

"Focus Maka." The young reaper breathed the command out almost silently.

The words fell on deaf ears, both were to lost in their resonance. Soul tempered her frustration with the flash of a memory of the first time he turned into a weapon.

She pushed it gently aside, she wasn't looking for memories to replay. She had something specific to find. She needed to get to the place she was in when she first became a weapon.

Soul felt her desperation and drew back a bit, silencing himself, watching her mind and soul flex slightly.

There.

She knew.

She figured it out.

It wasn't a place, it was a state. She was insane, she remembered, when she had gone into weapon form. Her only goal had been buried deep, way deep in her mind and soul. The goal had the singular force to come forward and drive her when all of her other functions and rational directors went dead.

Maka began to pull at memories and emotions, randomly and quickly filling her mind with too much. It was too fast, but she needed it to happen just so. She kept pulling, replaying faster and faster the things she had in her mind that hurt her, scared her, made her feel anger, hate, love, pride.

The young reaper watched as Maka slumped limply into soul's grasp, in the very next moment he swore he heard Soul murmur Maka's name.

Their resonance link hummed as Soul reached forward and opened himself up, pulling Maka back just as he became aware that she was numbing herself to everything. She re-set herself into perfect clarity and he felt the slight switch in her.

Soul opened his eyes.

His hand loosely gripped the eight foot metal staff, attached to which was a long curved blue, black and grey blade. A scythe.

Their resonance link was simpler now; she had chosen to only share her emotions with him. (She reasoned that she shouldn't tell him how to wield a scythe when she was new to being one.) He followed her lead and took a glance at the joint where the blade met the staff. Currently it rested on the ground, allowing most of her weight to be supported by things other than him, like the dirt.

He felt a bright bubble of something like laughter ripple across her and into him.

He picked up her intent instantly. She was waiting for him to lift her, amused that he thought she looked heavy. There was the undercurrent of her intense joy at being in weapon form, the rush of accomplishment echoed in her joy.

Death the Kid watched the pair intently, hardly breathing, fearful that he might somehow break whatever it was that held her in weapon form and stabilized their resonance link.

She was an odd looking scythe, blue toned in contrast to the red color that Soul took. The joint where the staff met the blade resembled half of a sharp gear jutting from the metal. Soul's weapon form had a rectangle of metal with three finger sized holes in it.

Soul looked over the scythe again. He let the feel of her laughter (now fading into a supportive sort of focused strength) echo in him as he gently lifted the scythe off the ground.

She was light. He felt her surprise in bright yellow, a reflection of his own surprise at her weight.

He turned to look at Death the Kid. The young reaper was standing with his hands in his pockets looking at the ground to his left.

"Kid?"

Soul's voice made the young reaper's eyes flash to his face, and then the weapon in his hands.

"Hm?"

Soul felt Maka's emotion try to temper him back into focus.

Soul swung her around, slowly then quickly before swinging the blade into a wide arc over his head and bringing the blade to a sudden stop mid-air. He moved to swing the blade again, bringing the blade down in a low swipe to the ground as he bent into a crouch. He let the staff swing from his left hand and pivot his right wrist until he caught the staff as it swung behind his shoulders.

The laughter (from Maka) flooding their link had toned into quiet awe.

Soul smirked and stood upright, planting the non-blade end of the staff solidly on the ground by his sneaker.

"Whoo!" Maka's voice flooded their resonance link, louder than she intended because he had dropped his guard in effort to focus on swinging the scythe around.

His smirk deepened as a bright sliver of light ushered in the transformation of Maka from weapon to human.

"Sorry."

Maka only looked half apologetic as she kicked at the grass with her boot.

They both turned to Death the Kid who was composed (if only just) and approaching the pair with a shadow of confusion on his face.

"What happened?"

The young reaper gestured to the now human Maka.

"Oh, that."

Soul repressed laughter with an eye roll and a slight nod in the direction of his partner.

"She giggled."

…

END.

Disclaimer: I don't own Soul Eater.


	2. Chapter 2

Resonance: Professor

Stine has seen them fight together.

It is a seamless act and from the outside –from the perspective of a normal observer- she wields him. It is she who calls the shots and supplies the energy. It is her barely tempered anger and sheer will that drives them forward and gives her motion its hyper-paced tempo.

This is not the case.

It is the first time he has resonated with them in any capacity, a chain resonance that gives him his first look into their connection.

He is made aware, automatically, that Soul is the better tactician of the pair. Stine dimly feels Soul give Maka an instruction, an order to move. She does so, without hesitation or thought or argument.

If he were to pay attention (and he would like to, but he is occupied by the soul of a witch in the body of a small blonde girl) he would notice that Soul only orders Maka to defend herself. The weapon mentions openings in their opponent's defenses out of a sense of thoroughness. Soul is already aware that Maka needs no help attacking something.

In the back of his mind Stine keeps watching them.

There is a trust between the pair that he did not expect to find.

Their resonance rate is much more stable than it was when they were new to each other. When they had to force their souls together and quiet their minds enough to let the other in. Stine can feel the memory of that humming underneath their resonance even now, in the middle of battle.

They are joined seamlessly, mind and soul. Stine can feel the static of something surrounding them, a separation between him and the pair of them. A shielding translucent barrier. It surprises him. The feel of it is tidy and clean, strong. Very strong.

If he had to guess he would credit the barrier to Maka, the flavor of her soul supports the static film, rests just behind it and seems to coat it.

He is impressed at her, at the length she would go to in ensuring her partner's safety. (It was he who told her that misters can attack the minds of other weapons through any level of chain resonance.) He can feel the black blood in both of them, more so in the weapon than the mister. He feels the slight urge to ask her if she has been shielding both of them in every chain resonance. Or if she chose to shield them in this resonance because he had so recently been under Medusa's influence. (He felt the marks the black blood had left on his soul and mind. He knew Maka could probably sense them there.)

Maybe she had always put some sort of barrier between the two of them, to protect their most private thoughts and quiet mental workings. After all, if their connection became too complete, their resonance rate near perfect… their entire minds would be sprawled open upon each other. An entire lifetime of thought and feeling, all those memories and images would overcrowd and weigh down on them both.

He wondered if Soul maintained a barrier between them that filtered out all of the excess thought. Perhaps Maka maintained a barrier between herself and her weapon, as well as a barrier around them?

He would have to ask her sometime. When they were not so busy with the task at hand.

Stine turns his focus back to the two of them, the electric and ocean calm feel of their connection. It is not built on their trust in their own abilities. Not completely, anyway.

Stine understands, implicitly, that they are of equal strength.

It may be Maka's emotion that provides her energy (and in turn gives her the stamina needed to wield her partner) but it is Soul that sets their tempo. Soul that holds her back and drives her forward if need be.

Stine is not sure how the weapon does that. He hears the blonde haired jacket clad scythe mister scream out, a battle cry laced and loaded with defiance and rage. Stine wonders how anyone as calm as Soul Evans manages complete harmony with Maka.

Stine feels Marie laugh at his interest and confusion regarding the pair.

Of course.

It is so logical, so effortlessly simple that he is amazed he did not understand it before. That it took observation from this perspective to comprehend.

Maka Albarn is every bit as skilled as her famed mother. (And, if he was being honest with himself, the young scythe mister had already surpassed the legacy left to her)

It stands to reason that Soul Evans was just as talented as his partner.

…

Resonance: Battle vs. Free

This is not the first time they have resonated.

He feels her frustration seep into their connection and she can feel him smirking.

They both silently recognize that this is the hardest resonance they have preformed to date. This is even more difficult than their first attempts.

Because they were new to the art then, the connection they had took focus, effort. They were alike in their inexperience and hesitation. The first times they opened their minds up, really blew them wide and invited each other in were much different than this.

This is the hardest resonance.

It is barely stable, she feels angry at their instability (because it is not perfection) and he feels pissed off that she is so critical and demanding of them both. He wants to scream the story of every last one of their joint failures at her, as loud as he can. He is sick of her trying to make them perfect.

She is sick of them not reaching perfection. Because, in her mind, Soul is more capable than her pathetic father and she herself is nearly as skilled as the academy's best mister. (We nearly beat Stine, she recalls with a mental prod in Soul's direction.)

Their wavelengths are disjointed, shuddering as they try to hold together and maintain the binding that both mister and weapon need to function as a unit.

She is trying to force his wavelength to line up with hers, while ignoring every negative thing she has ever said about her. She is trying to pretend she doesn't give a damn about his opinion.

He is pressing against her soul, trying to force it back into calm alignment. (Because even in battle, while she expresses anger and lets rage drive them both… her soul is calm.) Today he cannot find any of that calm in her, so he tries to delve deeper into his mister. He begins to search about in her mind, and it is then that she shuts him out completely.

She reminds him, brutally, that he cannot just go inside her thoughts without permission. The rest of her connection to him begins to ice over, the emotional unison fading out as his awareness of her presence in his own soul vanishes.

Just before their resonance fails he looks past his own confusion and anger, spotting the hurt she is so valiantly trying to keep from him.

He lets the connection between them break down as he lets his mind race through a series of assumptions… coming to the conclusion that something he did managed to hurt her.

And that is why they cannot resonate. She will not trust her soul with him, not if she feels hurt and exposed to more harm.

He lets himself mull over everything that happened in the last two days. Normally he would not have time for non-battle oriented thinking, but since his mind is not occupied by a resonance link or the need to analyze the fighting style of their opponent… he currently has the time.

He is dimly aware that she is trying to wield him. He already knows she will be unsuccessful, he can sense that his weapon form is burning her. He isn't too heavy for her to lift (she is stronger than she looks) but her gloves are doing nothing to protect her from how searing hot the metal staff has become.

He winces a bit as he hears her whisper words of encouragement to herself. It is normally his voice keeping her focused in battle, now, in his absence, she is trying to maintain her composure alone.

It takes him a fraction of a moment to understand that even if she could hold onto him (he was sure there would be burn scars on her hands now) the opponent before her could not be killed. The best outcome would be to _wound the_ _immortal_ and get the heck out of dodge.

Attached to that understanding is an even simpler truth, the scythe mister could not accomplish that task alone.

He sends a spark of his soul out toward hers, astonished and grateful that she has left her soul wide open and exposed. She doesn't' feel him try to connect to her at first; she is busier ignoring the livewire pain in her hands and the screaming fear that has begun to speed her heart rate. She is hell-bent on them making it off this bridge.

Soul catches that thought slide across the thin connection he has made to her mind. He feels pride for her.

As gently as he can manage (the hot metal against the tips of her fingers and the red-raw skin of her palms makes him feel guilt) he reaches her soul and mind and spreads out himself. There is nothing he can hide from her, and he hopes it will be enough.

She brushes back, grasping the connection he made in her and re-establishing their resonance.

In a rush he pulls his emotion forward, coupling it with his memory and showing it to her. He needs her to know he understands that he hurt her, that he isn't quite sure how… that he wants to apologize. He is her weapon, it echoes about in his mind and she hears it like a repeatedly whispered lyric, his job is to protect her, not cause harm.

There is more, flashing in the connection between them, he keeps pulling forward more memories and more images (her hands trying to hold onto the unholy heat of the scythe is an image colored with his reverence) and he wants her to know that she cannot fight her battles alone.

He would not allow it.

She feels him smirk as he tugs their souls into alignment. There is a murmur about continuing this conversation when they return home.

They resonate properly and although Maka feels flashes of doubt toward her weapon…

Even as she throws aside the scythe to forcibly remove the immortal from the bridge, a quick snarl loosed at the back of her throat, the satisfaction that followed and the panic at the heels of it all

… she can feel his relief drown her through their link as his hand wraps around her ankle.

END.

Author's note: I do not own Soul Eater.

I am aware that Soul is not often referred to by anything more than his first name. However, I felt that since I was using the word "soul" and the name "Soul" quite often in rapid fire… a distinction needed to be made.

I also like the feel of the name Soul Evans; it contrasts with Maka's nicely.

The first portion of this chapter may be a bit hard to make sense of. My apologies. It is taken from cannon, when Maka and Stine perform a chain resonance so that Stine can communicate with Maka. This takes place in the anime version of the series, just before the fight.

I figured that Stine would keep the chain resonance in place (so he could keep track of Maka's location during the fight/battle) and because it would allow him to more closely observe the mister/weapon pair. By this time Maka is already more skilled than her mother was, Stine would undoubtedly want to see her at work.

As for the second part of this chapter…

It takes place during and directly before the fight between the immortal wolf/witch Free and Maka/Soul. I am fully aware that they are not the only ones who are present on the bridge during that battle. I just preferred to keep the focus on the two of them, since there was a lot going on inside their minds in that sequence.

Also, the writing involving their resonance was not a super-clear cut bit of work. It is emotional and non-specific and hazy by design. Though, if anything is unclear please ask. I will reply to questions within the best of my ability.


	3. Chapter 3

Resonate: First meeting with Crona

They had already completed their mission.

The assignment Lord Death had given to them was neither too simple nor too challenging. The Reaper seemed to have a gift for pairing the right Tech and weapon with the correct job for their skill set.

They were just about to pack up and head back to the hotel (they had a flight to catch the next afternoon) when Maka mentioned the weird goings-on happening just a half mile away. In the vicinity of a rather stunning old church that Soul had been eyeing earlier.

It was obvious that they would be checking out whatever was happening, or not happening, inside said church. Still, Soul felt compelled to mention his dissenting opinion.

Maka, in turn, felt absolutely drawn to the church… and thus, dragged her reluctant weapon to the building anyway.

It was Maka who first understood the completely unholy hell they had walked into. With the doors that only open one way and the gut feeling that this… mister… was stronger than them both. She could sense the weapon on him somewhere, winding around the boy's soul wavelength like ivy.

The scraps of resonance between herself and Soul whispered her fear into his being.

The impossibly thin boy summoned his weapon, a black bladed sword.

They worked in harmony after that second, each reaching out their resonance links and focusing on the task at hand as if they were born to do nothing else.

A few seconds into the fight (after the sword mister's blade screamed loud enough to shake Maka's very bones) Soul felt something strange in his mister. Fear. The scythe mister had never vividly expressed fear, she thought it irrational and useless… and he normally agreed with her.

However, he found her fear to be rooted in very reasonable, rational concerns.

Like the fact that they couldn't leave this church, because, as the sword mister so elegantly stated… the doors only opened one way. They only opened, unforgiving, inward.

Or how completely outmatched they were by the aforementioned sword mister… because landing a blow to the misters skin did nothing, and blocking the sword was damn near killing Soul.

The scythe did not find fault in his mister's fears. Even without the same detailed analysis Maka had given the situation Soul was acutely aware that without an act of god they would die here.

In retrospect, they were spared by an act of god. (The Death Weapon Mister Academy's two finest students did demolish the church's heavy wooden doors and wound the sword mister… not a moment too soon.)

But Maka did not really notice. She could never dwell on that particular set of events, because what occupied all of the scythe mister's focus was the state of her partner and the actions that led him to that state.

She is amazed and guilt ridden at the very idea of him in human form blocking a blow from a weapon. It has been twelve hours and already the bleeding has stopped and his skin has been sewn closed. (The scar on his body is screaming of her failure and his dedication)

What she does not understand (she replays their near slaughter over and over in her memory) is how she didn't know what he was going to do. One moment they were resonating, filling each other up with anger and fear… the next moment she felt nothing from him.

There was no sense of disconnect as there normally was upon ending a resonance link. Soul had managed to cut off their connection without warning and without hurting her. (The establishment and disconnection of a resonance link was a mutual process. To make it a one-sided action was to run a high risk of damaging the link between mister and weapon.)

She stood, too anxious and hyper-tense to sit. Maka refused to leave Soul's bedside, an understandable course of action. One that earned her a wide berth with anyone who wished to set foot in the weapon's hospital room.

She radiated restrained anger and something akin to fear.

Just underneath that emotion were more subtle feelings. Joy that her partner would pull through this assignment. Doubt in her skills as a mister, due mainly to crossing paths with someone who had bested her so soundly and looked not a day older than herself. (She was so used to being the best. Second rate in anything, especially this sort of thing, was little more than absolute failure.)

The last emotion was buried so deep in herself that she knew she would never give it voice. Yet it seeped into all of her other emotions in some form or another.

She was not worth saving. Not after failing him.

Maka sighed and ran a hand through her hair. The hospital smelled like bleach, copper and the tang of lemons. The monitor hooked to Soul's body beeped out a consistent heart rate. The tile and the shine of the glass pane in the window caught her reflection and threw it back at her.

…

She would eventually get used to seeing his scar, though she would never forget its existence. Not even when he hid it under sweaters and tuxedo jackets or light cotton t-shirts.

…

"I can handle this."

"Are you sure?"

Black Star's words carry a hint of concern, rare for the egotistical mister, but not entirely uncalled for.

The scythe mister senses the presence of her weapon and a flicker of understanding passes between them, brightened into a specific emotion by their resonance link.

She nods and the blue haired mister is gone, sprinting off into the dark spaces underneath the academy.

All that she can see are the stone pillars that hold the ceiling up in the shadows and there, directly in front of her, there is the figure of an impossibly thin boy holding a black bladed sword.

Her weapon smirks as she takes an unhesitant step forward. She should have avoided this situation. Logically, the odds of her beating the sword mister were slim. She had no idea how to beat him as she had no concept of how to properly harm the boy.

Theirs is a sick sort of faith.

Scythe and mister drown in unison for a moment, awash in cello music and the blisteringly dark sound of a piano. She restrains a laugh. Everything falls silent across their link.

Thoughts, all her own, hit her in rapid order. Her weapon is healed, marked but whole. She is stronger, faster and the boy in front of her was human. He is crazy, she notes this fact by itself, separate from the fact that his weapon can still cause harm to her weapon.

She slides into a crouch and launches herself forward. There is significant energy behind her swing and she represses her fear as the sword mister blocks the blow with the palm of his open hand. The sword mister has his weapon in a light one handed grip. His eyes are cast to the floor, head tilted to one side.

She feels their resonance link become clashing emotion.

Soul is fearing for her life and she is holding back a smile.

…

Her wavelength is absolutely singing with something he cannot properly identify.

He tries to ignore the fact that they could very well die at the hands of this scrawny pink haired male (who is already half insane)… the precedent was already there. He tries very hard to repress the nagging feeling that they are here because Maka wants another shot.

He feels her laughter flood their link and instantly he knows that despite her status as the academy's top student, an avid bookworm and a mild enthusiast for top 40's pop music… this face off is not by accident.

She has been craving this reunion and it would (if the rage weaving into her soul was any indication) be very personal.

He focuses now. The knowledge that she is out for blood is both a source of pride and worry. She slides into a crouch before she tosses the weapon aside and leaps forward, spinning on a heel and solidly connecting the heel of her boot with the boy's ribs.

He can feel the anger in her warming her up and stringing her out. He understands her method. Even if he is pissed that she cannot wield him right now. She wants to make the sword mister hurt. (And Soul has no doubt that she can do that.) But she cannot break the boy's skin.

She is yelling now and Soul watches as she lands another hard kick to his lower back. The boy stumbles forward and she is there, grabbing his collar and slamming him into a stone pillar. She turns him to face her and her gloved hand connects solidly with his lower ribs. Her forearm is at the sword misters throat and the boy is gasping for air.

She retreats a few steps and the sword mister leans against the pillar for a second before he steps forward. Despite the obvious injuries he is working with there is a glint of madness in his eyes.

Maka recovers her scythe while the thin sword mister tries to breath. He can sense a sort of controlled recklessness in her posture.

All he can think is that she cannot defeat a mister who is infected with madness. In Soul's unofficial opinion, this screwy little mister boy had already reached "too far gone" ages ago.

Her voice floats over their link, she is whispering the word "why" over and over. She wants to know why she cannot beat him if she can break every one of his bones and choke him half to death.

He feels her willingness to lay her hands on the sword mister again. She wants to hit him, her soul sings for it.

He hasn't told her much about black blood. So he keeps his thoughts short, because she will examine everything he says and he knows it.

He is aware, due to the nature of resonance, the moment she understands that she can beat the demon sword mister. He is also aware that she sees it as a battle technique instead of a mental state she may not be able to shed herself of.

He feels her soul calm and her mind quiet down as the scythe mister spins her weapon in a slow circle beside herself before holding it lightly in her left hand, blade curving toward the floor.

He pulls her into a mind-space inside of their resonance link. They are nowhere near his soul and he is grateful for that.

She is clad in the same black jacket and plaid skirt as always. He is in his sweater and sneakers, as always.

"I am going to go insane."

She was impressively calm about the whole idea, he saw a light pulse of yellow that felt like her heartbeat.

"That is basically it."

This was stupid, completely un-logical and quite possibly the worst plan she has ever come up with in the history of ever.

"Your job will be to trigger my insanity and eventually, pull me back from it. Got it?"

He nodded.

She let out a long breath and bit her lip.

"All I have to do is fight the sword mister. Simple."

A puddle appeared between them, it had the color of maroon tinted blackness. She shook her head, a slight smirk on her face before she jumped in, feet first, and was swallowed whole by the nasty puddle.

The effect was instant.

Soul felt her wavelength try to break from his and he held it close as it screamed for a higher resonance rate. Her soul was nothing but blankness and anger, pure rage and a mix of nonsensical debris.

Still their resonance rate went higher. He let it climb a bit more before he pulled them back to a more stable rate.

He watched as his mister's eyes dragged themselves off of the floor and fixated on the boy's shoulder. She had started giggling and he was dimly aware that she was dragging him across the floor as she stepped toward the thin sword mister.

Fight the sword mister?

He heard her start to giggle. In a half second she had lifted the scythe above her head and brought it down, swinging hard across her body, connecting with the blade of the sword mister.

There was an undignified sound coming from her, a vowel drawn out too long and rendered in a very girly way. She let the scythe blade scrape against the sword before she swung the blade out and down, completing the stroke as the sword mister moved to hit her side.

Automatically her arm rises, hand out, palm exposed. The black blade meets her palm, but it does not cut her. There is a moments pause before she meets the gaze of the sword mister.

Soul allows himself a quiet and very sane laugh. Fight the sword mister? She was going to unleash holy hell on the boy. She was going to cook that freaky little nut job like a toaster pastry. She was going to beat the ever-living shit out of him.

He refocused just as she gripped the middle of the staff with both hands and threw her entire body behind a blow that connected the joint of staff and blade to the boy's stomach.

The momentum threw her forward and in a display of drunken grace she plants the point of the blade into the ground and jumps onto the handle, staring in the direction the boy was thrown.

She was currently out of her mind.

He switches focus back inward just as he hears her start singing about "pretty giggles." While he is tempted to preserve that memory for the rest of his life, it is highly disturbing and just plain weird and he needs to go fish Maka out of this whole mess.

He examines the puddle that she jumped into. It is more like a lake now. Somehow he has been standing on top of its oily surface unaware that the puddle expanded, the bottoms of his sneakers are sinking into it now and he feels a slight bit of concern as he inhales a breath.

It takes him a while to find her in the dark.

In the time he spends digging through the unnamed semi-solid liquid he keeps an eye on the body of his mister. He watches her beat the sword mister nearly to unconsciousness in a manner that could only be called gleeful. There is the dim hum of pride that she uses the blunt end of his weapon form, because it won't kill the sword mister.

On the heels of that thought is the gut feeling that letting her continue to beat the sword mister (who looked a bit scared now) while she lacked better judgment was irresponsible of him.

Eventually he manages to pull both of them out of the maroon and black puddle lake thing and is surprised to find his sneakers un-stained by the entire episode.

"Soul, focus."

Right, now that Maka wasn't insane anymore she could take over her body and go back to being herself.

There was an odd silence. Soul looked up and Maka was still there, standing in front of him with a look of blank horror. He pushed his attention out past their resonance link and… oh, well that was disgusting.

Maka had somehow managed to pin the (currently) completely terrified sword mister into a headlock and was trying to fit the back of the boy's head into her mouth. There was a lot of drool and almost no dignity. Maka's body lets out a scream that is both animalistic and impossibly high pitched before dropping the boy and delivering a very hard kick to his lower spine.

The sword mister rolls forward with a murmur of protest before Maka delivers another blow, her boot connecting with the back of the boy's head.

"Oh wow."

Maka watched herself with all the pained rapture of someone witnessing a plane crash in slow motion.

"It worked."

Soul grimaces but keeps the words lighter. A congratulations of sorts.

She understood instantly that he was referring not only to her recovery from insanity, but to the sword mister as well.

She smiled.

"Now, if you would…?"

He gestures toward the air around them and she catches a flicker of what her body is doing.

She is spinning around in circles, dancing with her weapon the way one would dance with a mop. She was singing too, something about "bubbles and giggles."

Soul can feel her disgust and amusement as she takes hold of her body again. The first time her sane eyes take in the sword mister properly there is amazement. He feels it too, because like her, this is his first real look at the damage she can cause when truly left unhindered.

The boy is out cold, sprawled brokenly across the stone floor he is a mess of light bruises that have already begun to form. His leg is bent at an odd angle and his breathing is barely there. She can see how uneven his ribs seem to lay and she knows that most are likely broken.

There is a red mark across his windpipe and an indent in his sallow collar bone that appears to be another messy fracture. Soul whispers to her mind about the things she cannot see, the shots she landed on his lower back and abdomen. His tone feels cold when he informs her that there will be massive internal bruising, but that not a drop of his blood was spilled.

She can hear a hint of reverence in his voice. For a moment she lets her gratefulness slide across their link with a subtle undertone of admiration.

Theirs is a sick sort of faith.

…

**END.**

…

Author note: I do not own Soul Eater.

This work is now finished.

This was a slight twisting of the cannon presented in the anime. While prior chapters have not been based off of any form of cannon I tried to stick to script here.

Any further stories relating to this theme (because I will likely be making something similar for the resonance of Liz/Kid/Patty) will be posted separately.

Thank you for reading.


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